Stolen Grace Read online

  But neither they, nor the world, saw the recession like a sly fox waiting to pounce. Neither knew the extent of elbow grease a rural place demanded—the extra costs like a new septic system, the plumbing, and replacing the fire-hazardous wiring. Sylvia had imagined that Tommy (with his hardy, worked-out physique) would be the consummate Fixer-Upper and embrace chopping wood for the greedy stove all winter. She was wrong. He grew tired of their project; even the knotty pine doors and cedar-lined closets ceased to thrill him. The twenty-two feet cathedral ceilings that made them whoop with joy when they first set eyes on the house now spelled out C.O.L.D in cruel capital letters. The wrap-around porch made of redwood decking no longer held the most beautiful view on earth, because when December came the view was home to icy-tipped mountains that gnawed their bones with a walloping wind.

  Then spring and summer would arrive and life was blissful again. Wild flowers sprinkled themselves like daytime stars across the hills, skies sang deep blue, and sparkling rivers were brimming with trout. But the joy all this brought was tempered by the Big Winter Threat lurking around the corner. Pretty summer days were interrupted by frosty visions of what was to come around again. She, Tommy, and Grace were caught in a never ending eddy, round and round they went as if they were in a little canoe looking out over gushing white water, stuck by the danger around them. If they sold, they’d lose every penny. They’d sunk all they had into this house. Besides, where would they live? They’d have to start from scratch and rent again. But there weren’t any jobs anymore, how would they make the rent? Tommy’s salary was history. So were the jobs. The IT world moved so swiftly, with thousands of wiz-kids jumping aboard the train every month that, even at thirty-two, Tommy seemed like a dinosaur. And he’d been out of touch, out of circulation. Getting another job, even with a pay decrease, was not an easy task. The theatrical agency Sylvia worked for had been bought out by one more powerful. Many of her old colleagues had been fired and her contacts were now spread thin.

  Sometimes, she dreamed of her little family moving to Europe but Tommy wouldn’t hear of going back. Besides, the dollar was as weak as “an ex-Marine Colonel dying of cancer,” he said. Once a force, it now grappled to survive.

  She and Tommy had also been a force, and were now grappling to survive.

  So they soldiered on. Perhaps this disillusionment was what had caused the Bel Ange fantasy to hatch. A distraction, like looking at porn or sports cars. Living in a two-dimensional daydream world. Something to ease the stress for a thirty-something male who’d bitten off more than he could chew.

  Grace needed him, though. And Sylvia too. Although she hated to admit it. Even with her armor on, she still felt butterflies flutter inside her when Tommy looked at her. She remembered how he licked a raindrop from her cheek one time, passion dancing in his eyes.

  Love like that can’t just disappear.

  She wondered if he sensed that she still had faith, that he still made her stomach flip-flop. She knew she was repelling him—frost on a winter lawn. Yet she needed him, wanted him close. Her head was telling her that the only reason she desired him was because they were a family, but even if Grace weren’t there, the truth was that Sylvia was still in love with Tommy.

  Painfully in love.

  But there was that niggling feeling inside that one day, he would just get up and leave her for good. The only thing keeping him there for the moment, she feared, was his love for Grace.

  CHAPTER 2

  Grace

  “Will you get me an Xbox, Daddy?” Grace cried out. She was sitting on the pine table in the kitchen, wildly swinging her legs. She looked at her dad, who was leaning against the handcrafted hickory cabinets that he had helped the carpenter make, her shimmering eyes expectant. She gave him her biggest smile. They were discussing the “present.” Grace knew she needed to seal the deal before he forgot, or became distracted with something else. She cocked her head and blinked her lashes.

  “No, no Xbox, honey,” Sylvia interrupted. “Please don’t get her any more stuff like that, Tommy, and no video games.”

  Grace pouted. Her mother just didn’t get it. “But I like video games, Mommy,” she said, her voice rising on the word “like.”

  “Daddy can get you some paints, real paints that you can touch and mix with water. Not just virtual, iPad paints.”

  “You’d be surprised,” Tommy said, “what digital artists can achieve with iPad art apps. Don’t knock it, Sylvia.”

  “What’s virtual?” Grace asked.

  Sylvia put on some oven gloves and took out the pie. “It’s when you can’t touch or smell something, when you cannot feel it with your hands.”

  “But I can feel Daddy’s iPad with my hands when I paint and draw.” She looked up at her mom, widening her amber eyes.

  Sylvia set the pie on a hotplate on the kitchen table. “Well, honey, I guess that’s true, but now we’re going to take those cute, artistic, itty-bitty little hands of yours that can paint and draw, and wash them before you eat this apple pie.” She lifted Grace from the table and set her on her feet.

  “Yummy!” Grace loved apple pie, although she was pretty sure that this was the first time her mother had ever made it. Grace never ate the doughy parts, though, just the juicy, apple bits. Her dad called her “Putty-Tooth” when she wouldn’t eat her crusts. Sometimes, he was the “Great Bird Ziz” who would come with his big, wicked beak and snap at her bottom or her arms. She loved the Great Bird Ziz, although occasionally it could get out of control and she’d beg for her dad to return to normal. Grace knew it was just his big hands pretending to be a beaky, child-eating bird, but still.

  She stood on an upside down crate by the sink, as her mother washed her hands. She felt the warm, soapy water running through her fingers, and her mom’s big palms massaging the fat wide bits below her thumbs as the gushing water flowed from the faucet. She liked seeing the different colors of their hands together, too. Hers and her mom’s, like white chocolate and caramel.

  As her mom pat-patted them dry, Grace thought about something she had been meaning to ask for ages. “Mommy, what is God? My friend Joey says that God is dog spelled backwards so he must be a dog but you always use a capital letter when you say God’s name. Why does God get a capital letter?”

  “Good point,” Tommy said. “That pie smells good.”

  “Because” Sylvia said, “there is only one God. At least in America that’s true. Where you came from—India—there are lots of gods.”

  “Like Ganesh, the elephant god?”

  “That’s right,” Tommy answered. “And Hanuman, the monkey god.”

  “A capital letter is a big letter, right?” Grace asked.

  “Exactly. Like when we were writing Grace the other day for writing practice, and we made a big G,” her mom replied, serving out some apple pie on a plate for Grace.

  “Our God is a dog,” Tommy piped up, “and God is a tree and a flower. In fact, God is all the trees and flowers and grass and animals of the universe.”

  Grace bit her lower lip and thought about this. It didn’t make sense. “But if I pick a flower does that mean I’ll kill God?”

  Tommy laughed. He went over to the refrigerator and took out a beer.

  “No, of course not, sweetie, God lives forever,” her mom explained, tying a napkin about Grace’s neck. “Careful with the pie. Blow on it first—it’s hot.”

  “Oh.” Grace considered this some more. “But if God is everything and he is a dog and a rabbit and a flower and a tree, then that means he is you, Daddy, and you, Mommy, and—”

  “That’s correct,” Tommy said, and winked, “very observant. God is in everything good.”

  Grace took a big spoonful of pie. The apple part, not the crust. She saw her mom smile, but this God thing was serious. She needed answers. How could God with a big G be everywhere at once? Wasn’t he too busy? Grace had been told about brains, that each creature, each human had a brain, and that would mean God would have millions and t
rillions of brains because every brain was His and that, in fact, to be so on top of it all, God must actually be a computer. But if He was a computer, he wouldn’t have a real live brain at all. And if God was living inside a rabbit, did that make him think like a rabbit? Or want to make millions of babies the way rabbits did? She wanted to ask this but was worried her mom would stop smiling. Not about the rabbit part but about the computer part. She’d ask her dad later. He’d understand.

  Grace thought of another problem: “Mommy, when’s your friend coming to stay?” She didn’t want the friend to steal her Mom-Time.

  “That’s right,” Sylvia said, walking over to the sink. “I forgot to tell you, Tommy, Ruth is coming to stay for a couple of weeks.”

  He took a swig of beer. He still hadn’t sat down at the table. “Ruth?”

  “She’s Mommy’s Skype Friend,” Grace explained. “The one she talks to about Writing,” (yawn, yawn). “I’ve seen her. She looks like a weasel.”

  Sylvia doused a pan with some dishwashing liquid and began to scrub. “Ruth does not look like a weasel, sweetie. You loved her when she came to stay a couple of years ago.”

  “I can’t remember her. But on Skype she has eyes the color of poop!” Grace thought of all those long, BORING conversations they had. Stealing her mom away from her.

  Sylvia laughed but shook her head. “Such nonsense. Ruth is very attractive, actually. She’s fun.”

  “Well I was away when she last came to stay,” Tommy said, “so I wouldn’t know about her eyes. It’s true though—you do Skype a lot. How come she didn’t come last summer to stay?”

  “She’s been living abroad. In Dubai. That’s why I thought it would be fun if she came to visit now—she left her job, so has some free time. It would be nice if we discussed our projects face to face for once, instead of always online.”

  “Well you do seem to have a lot to chitchat about,” Tommy said, taking another gulp of beer.

  Sylvia stopped her scrubbing. “It’s nice to get feedback.” She gave him an angry smile. But dipped in sugar, Grace thought.

  “What’s feed back? Is that the food you give to horses?” Grace asked, her expression earnest.

  Sylvia’s lips curled into a grin. “No honey. You give horses feed. Feedback . . . is . . . how would you describe feedback, Tommy?”

  “When a band plays and there’s all this noise from the amps and stuff.”

  “Tommy, please. Don’t complicate things.”

  Grace saw her mom’s Cross-Face scowl at her dad. She hated it when she looked like that—the Wolf Face. Her dad didn’t have a Wolf Face. He had another kind of face. It was the Naughty Dog Face. It happened when he told fibs. Like that time he promised to take her to the movies but he forgot and bought her Reese’s peanut butter cups instead, and he thought that was okay, which it wasn’t. A deal is a deal. Or when he mixed powdered milk with water and put it in the fridge, pretending it was real milk. She knew he was a Naughty Dog sometimes, and she knew he’d been a Naughty Dog with her mom. Something to do with Facebook.

  “Can I start my own Facebook page?” Grace asked, forgetting the feedback question.

  “Of course you can, Bunny,” Tommy said. “We can do it today as I’m off tomorrow. So what time’s Ruth coming, Sylvia?”

  Sylvia took off her apron and laid it on the back of one of the kitchen chairs. “I don’t know about Facebook for a five-year-old, Tommy. I mean . . . no. Just, no.”

  “Please, Mommy!”

  Sylvia shook her head and said, “I synchronized it with your flight so I don’t have to make two trips to the airport. I’ll drop you off and wait for her. Only half an hour, or so. Gracie and I can get some lunch there.”

  “Can we get a burger at the drive-by?” Grace didn’t know why she was even asking this question. She knew it would be a “no.” It was always a no. No to Facebook. No to burgers. Her mom was against Intensive Farming and believed that cows must be free in fields and eat grass, not grain.

  Sylvia gave Grace The Look. The Don’t Be Silly look, the Watch Out or I Could Get Cross look: one eyebrow raised with a flicker of a smile on her lips.

  “Just kidding!” Grace said. “I’ll get a giant-sized bucket of greasy popcorn instead.”

  “Quite a sense of humor you’ve got going there, little lady,” her mother answered with an I’m Smiling but It’s Not Funny look. She now turned her attention to sweeping the floor with the funny broom that looked like it belonged to a witch. The old-fashioned kind, made of real straw.

  “So how was it again that you and Ruth met in the first place?” Tommy asked, winking at Grace.

  “They met on Facebook!” Grace cried, wondering if the Facebook part would make her mom’s Wolf Face return.

  “Yes, that’s right, I almost forgot,” her dad said with a grin.

  “Drop it, Tommy,” Sylvia warned.

  Grace knew that the Facebook bit would get some sort of reaction but she still wasn’t sure why. Why was Facebook such a big deal?

  “So you can meet strangers on Facebook,” he quipped, “and even invite them to stay in our house, yet I—”

  “You know it’s a different situation, Tommy. I don’t go round asking to be friends with strangers just because they look good. Anyway, the fact is that Ruth and I didn’t meet on Facebook. We met when I was trying to find someone to help Dad after Mom died. I sent out an e-mail to friends asking if they knew anybody. She was a friend of a friend of a friend. And then we both did that writers’ workshop together, she came to stay here, and we became very close.”

  “Same deal as Facebook, people start out as strangers and then become friends. What’s new? That’s what life is. It’s just that Facebook has a way of making it happen faster.” He was smiling as he spoke.

  “She’s not a stranger. And we really bonded. We chat all the time on Skype. I know lots about her. She’s lovely. Really warm.” Sylvia started scrubbing another pan so hard that Grace could hear the pan squeal out in pain.

  “Tell me about Ruth’s background again?” Tommy asked, more seriously now.

  “She went to Yale, and Harvard Business School. Worked as a banker. I’m not sure exactly what she does, some sort of consulting work. She was sent to Dubai by one of the big banks but hated it.”

  “So is she going to work at one of the banks in New York now?”

  Sylvia started to dry the pan. It was so scrubbed it shined silver. “Said she saved up ‘pots of money’ and is now taking time off to write her novel—wants to take a break from work. I think she’s really clever. Lived in Europe, speaks perfect Spanish and Portuguese. Grew up in Brazil.”

  “That’s right; I remember you telling me that.”

  “Anyway, she’s really well traveled; she backpacked around Asia, too. She’s half Cuban, half Brazilian, I think. By blood anyway. But totally American. She’s interesting. Just separated from her boyfriend.”

  “But she doesn’t have kids, right?” Tommy asked. “Or are they all grown up? She’s in her forties, isn’t she?”

  “No kids. After the banking job, she went to Mexico to a specialized IVF clinic to have her eggs frozen, but then she and the boyfriend broke up. All that money she invested and then her boyfriend left her. And there were other complications.”

  Tommy dipped a large spoon into the apple pie, Great Bird Ziz style, not bothering to get a plate. “I bet. How old is she, anyway?”

  “Forty-six.”

  “Forty-six?” he exclaimed, nearly choking on a full mouth. “I know women can get pregnant naturally at that age, but isn’t she a bit past her sell-by date to be having her eggs frozen and the whole IVF thing?”

  Sylvia hung the pan on a rack. It swung in the air, back and forth, on its hook. “Ruth’s in great shape. It was her last chance to have a baby.”

  “I’ll say.”

  “Don’t be such an ageist, Tommy—she’s a very young forty-six. I mean, look at Sandra Bullock. She’s pushing fifty and she looks amazing. Better, ac
tually, than a lot of women in their twenties.” She glared at him, and went on, “Anyway, Ruth and her boyfriend split up, so now she has nowhere to live. She’s doing a sort of tour, visiting friends this summer before she buys a place of her own with all that money she saved from the finance job. I thought it would be nice if she stopped here for a couple of weeks, you know, while you’re away. Thought we could do our own sort of writers’ workshop. It’ll be great, She can give me feedback on my half finished script, see if I’m going in the right direction, and I can give her feedback on her novel.”

  Grace watched her parents’ Ping-Pong match. That Feedback word again. What kind of food was feedback? Why did she want to give food back to people all the time? And the frozen eggs thing. All this talk about food. She’d find out what it all meant later when her mother was in her Sweet Mood, when they’d be all cozy together, later at Story-Time tonight, when she’d be tucked into bed with a cup of warm milk.

  CHAPTER 3

  Tommy

  Tommy had his bag packed. A year or so ago, he would have felt pained to leave Crowheart behind, but today his heart leapt. A break would do him good. This rustic lifestyle just wasn’t working out. It had been fun at first, but subjecting himself to being Earth Man for years to come, chopping wood all winter, was the last thing he wanted. He’d done everything he could to please his wife, but it wasn’t working. He’d tried, yearned to make her happy, but he couldn’t do it anymore; be her “happy barometer,” the one responsible for her equilibrium. He needed to make new plans for his family, for himself—he needed to get them out of this rut.

  As he stood in the kitchen drinking a Guinness, he watched Sylvia as she half-leaned against the table, chopping vegetables. Her tall frame was slightly stooped. She’d changed. The only thing he’d ever noticed about her height before was her grace, her elegance. She had always carried her shoulders erect, her golden head held high like a dancer. He’d always been struck by her beauty—she was still beautiful, but different. These days, she had a sad look to her so much of the time. Never with Grace—she was an amazing mother.